The back end of the elephant would currently make for an odd hit box for a platform. Maybe make it a bit flatter across the top? Some possible details on it could be a flapping tail, covered in mud, flys flying around it.

How do most games deal with the timing of jumping animations? It would be much nicer if the frog could jump different heights and distances with these frames, but how should a programmer know how long to keep certain frames before moving to the next one? A higher/lower animation should use a different number of frames..

I think it would normally be done by breaking the animation up. A jump and a loopable fall animation. Also it would need to be arranged in a static animation, so each frame is stacked on the previous one, just like the walking animations.

Hey Hapiel! I have an answer to your question about how a programmer would do variable jumps etc. First off, we never build in physics into the animation that is all handled by the code. Character sprites do not change in horizontal or vertical distance. It's all animating in one single location. Afterward a programmer would just code in the physics and conditions. In your animation it would be broken up into 4 animations. Jump prepare, Jump, Fall, and Land. All of these animations are triggered with events. Character is colliding with ground, player presses 'X' make character jump and play jump prepare. If character Y is negative(going upward) character is jumping/play jump anim, if character Y is positive (going downward) character is falling/play falling. Character collides with background while falling anim is playing, play animation land.

Thanks for the info Makapixel! Perhaps I should go to a single 'upwards' and a single 'downwards' frame. That would make implementation a lot easier...

Depending on how the animation is set up in the code, it might not make a difference in implementation difficulty at all, and barring some ridiculously arcane system, it shouldn't be difficult even if it does make a difference.The important thing is that no matter how many frames you have, they loop well, and that the animations that can come afterwards all transition well from any frame. With something like minor limb movements during a jump/fall, that should be easy to achieve. If making it one frame looks good, go for it. But if making it multiple looping frames would look better, feel free to do that too.

Alright now! Took one of the gorilla sprites and reworked it a bit to fit the style better. Still a very rough sketch but at least it's something to work off of.Whatcha think? Still trying out different colors combinations too to find a good contrast.

Cool, I like this! I'm looking forward to see more of it :).
Most of the straight lines work great, but especially in the face watch out that they don't take over too much, or it'll end up not matching the style as much as it could.

Contrast works fine I guess, it is nice to have some darker creatures :)

The hands look a lot better in your edit. I worry that the face is too simplified and looses readability, but clearly the body as a whole reads as a gorilla, so maybe thats not too much of a problem. I also think the back legs are a bit small, which is a problem from the original, it might help to look at a reference to get the proportions a bit better, even if they are exaggerated.

This ref seems great, it's pretty much the same pose.

Edit:
Link
^---hmmm, can't seem to link that image without it, well, just not working. Here's the URL
http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1466956!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_970/dallas-anti-social-ape.jpg

The simplicity I would agree with you on; the face was far from done regardless. Anyhow, Got another update!Detailed the face some more, raised the back legs, and still busy working on the shading. As well, I also added a second head variation, couldn't decide which I liked best.

Thanks for the reference pic by the way, don't know why I didn't think of that! ;p

It's definitely starting to come together. I think I like the second one better, partly because the head is being a bit smaller fits his body better, and also because I don't care for weird shading on the first one's arm/shoulder.

I was curious how hard it would be to recolor some animations, and it went way faster than I expected! I am leaving the attack animations for now, whoever feels like recoloring those too can go ahead...

Thats a cool alternative! The back of the head/trunk doesn't work though. The only time you would see the other side of the trunk like that, is when you're looking down somewhat on the character. Because we're viewing the character from the side, you'd only really see the front of the head/trunk and maybe some of the bark sticking up from behind.

I really like this! I can imagine it could also work as different versions of the same sprite, replacing a head is of course little work!

Also I am looking forward to whatever you are working on Ketsumio!

I am still trying to find out what is clever to do to the frog.. But with separated 'upwards' and 'downwards' animations, this arc is never going to look good... :(

I am trying to find examples of any other sprites that change orientation during their jump, but can't find any.. Does anyone know some?

You're not likely to find such sprites because most things don't actually change orientation during controlled jumps/falls. It's very difficult to change the body's orientation in mid-air for any animal, that's why cats are so renowned for their ability to do so (and even they only manage to achieve it through some spine-twisting acrobatics).The frog's body orientation should not change mid-jump, the only reason you should have different sprites for up and down motion it to take secondary motion into account (e.g. limb positions relative to the body).

Actually all animals that jump from their hind legs to their front legs do this a bit, but searching for sprites from horses/big cats etc the animations are always simplified so that no rotation is required... I guess I need to think of a way to simplify this animation too so that the poor thing stays upright...

That's interesting, thanks! I'd seen videos of frogs jumping before where the orientation didn't change so much, and they tended to land on their back legs. I think what's happening in your video isn't a volunary mid-jump change of orientation, but the back moving faster than the front, since that's the only part that gets impulse, and the front of the body drags "behind". The end visual is pretty much the same though - a gradual change in orientation.In any case, it's a tough thing to achieve without fully animated arcs, so I think going for a mostly-stable body and focusing on the limbs is still valid advice. As long as the engine moves the sprite in a nice arc and the limb motion is fluid (this might mean having two looping animations rather than two still sprites), it should still look good.

Anyway, sorry about the hiatus, just been a little busy this week that's all.So, as you can see, I worked the face and chest a bit more on the gorilla, and, I decided to make an attack animation for the black frog. (Just about finished up with the blue one) Do with it what you please :)

I better give that jump animation another go soon, then this is all finished up!

Here is a quick edit on the gorilla. The shoulder is moved forwards, the head is more separated and the eyes dark part is connected and darker... I looked at some gorilla images and this seemed to be what they all had in common. I lowered his bum a few pixels because it looked better to me, this was not from studying gorilla images so might be wrong ;)

You took a hard subject to pixel, but I am sure it is going to be awesome!

Hapiel my man! I knew it was missing something but after messing with it for so long I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. Just needed a fresh pair of eyes! It looks much better now, thanks for the help!

By the way I also took the liberty of adding the new frogs to the wiki as well, hope you don't mind. ;)

Animating for me is the easy part, but first that hero sprite needs to be finished. I should get back to my anatomy drawing lessons, this takes way more effort for me than I think it should, but here is a draft. Feel free to edit and improve!

On the right all the guys he was inspired by. I hoped to make him a bit smaller than the rest, a bit of an 'anti hero'. But perhaps the current version is too buff for that. I don't want to give him the spear or other huge accessories, a hero perhaps needs to be a bit neutral.. But at the same time not boring..

I agree about him needing to be neutral. I really liked the more slender body type of the original one that I animated, so I went ahead and did an edit. I tried making it a little more like the original. I noticed the black under the chin looked like a goatee, which I thought looked a bit odd on a main character. Also, I know the legs aren't supposed to be proportioned properly, but I don't think it fit the body type very well. He was kind of thick, and you will notice that the width of the legs do change on the body types.

I didn't draw his arms because I didn't want to overlap the torso and legs. This will actually give you something to work with when animating.

Hi, I did an edit of the monkey a while back that I never shared, where I tried to make it look more inline with the other monkeys we already have. I had a look at the version before yours though and I will say that you made some good improvements.

Here's what I'd made.

Thanks for breathing much needed life into this project. Keep it going ;)

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